SAMINTER.JTM - An brief interment ceremony originally done by James T. McCollum for the fa

SAMINTER.JTM - An brief interment ceremony originally done by
               James T. McCollum for the family of a person who
               died of AIDS
--------------------------------------------------------------------


                         MEMORIAL SERVICE

                               for

                        HAMISH MacTAGGART

                        Mt. Hope Cemetary

                         21 December 1993


In the presence of life, we say no to death.
In the presence of death, we say yes to life!


We come to this place, that we may give expression to the depth of 
loneliness and the longing-after-new-life which the death of 
Hamish MacTaggart has brought upon us.  Thus do we share the 
sights and sounds of loss and comfort, of fear and courage, of 
bitterness and love.  But especially of love - a love which can 
triumph over all pain, bringing us again to the font from which 
all meaning, beauty and truth eternally flows.

No person can sum up the life of another.  Life is too precious to 
be passed over with mere words which ring empty.  Rather, it must 
remain as it is remembered by those who loved and watched and 
shared.  For such memories are alive, unbound by events of birth 
or death.  And as living memories we posses the greatest gift one 
person can give to another.  

It is customary for our species, when one we love dies, to bring 
together those whose lives were touched significantly by the life 
of the one who has died.  This is the reason for a funeral or a 
memorial service.

While such services have been understood in many varying ways, the 
human function is to set an experiential marker at the end point 
of life to place a cairn at the conclusion of one human being's 
journey.  

The cairns along a wilderness trail are built of rocks of various 
shapes and sizes.  The memorial cairn at the end of a life is also 
a composite, but an experiential one.  It is made up of the 
memories, the thoughts and the feelings of all who are gathered to 
celebrate the life of the departed.  It is a recollection of what 
was for a time together and is now scattered and scattering.  Here 
is the one we knew.  We think of how our lives were touched by him 
and what he meant and his memory continues to mean to us. 

At the end of a life, we compose a symphony, an ordered creation 
whose notes and themes are the experiences of the people gathered.  
Themes dark and bright are sounded to recollect and order the 
impact of the life of the one who has died - honestly, fully, 
tenderly - and in the spirit of thanksgiving for the quality of 
that lived life.  
    
Our recollections of Hamish should strive to evoke rememberance, 
thanksgiving, a sense of the uniqueness of his life, a sense of 



the privilege of having known him, a sense of loss, of sadness, a 
feeling of emptiness, of unsureness and a hint that the ending of 
his life is a rehearsal of what is to come for everyone of us, 
ultimately.

Transcending our memories of Hamish should be a developing sense 
of trust in the slow, but steady, grace of healing and the 
affirmation that we live on and will live on, blessed by his life 
and by the memory of he who once was and is now gone, but who is 
and will be present in the world and in us in mysterious and 
hidden ways.  

We should also be mindful that existance, ours included, is a 
continuum, ever changing, yet, in a real sense, not really.  Elder 
Olson put it so well in "The Exegesis:"

      Nothing is lost; be still; the universe is honest.
      Time, like the sea, gives all back in the end, 
      But only in its own way, on its own conditions:
      Empires as grains of sand, force as coal,
      Mountains as pebbles.  Be still, be still, I say;
      You were never the water, only a wave;
      Not substance, but a form substance assumed.

And in the words of Langston Hughes:

              Dear lovely Death
              That taketh all things under wing - 
              Never to kill - 
              Only to change
              Into some other thing
              This suffering flesh, 
              To make it either more or less, 
              But not again the same - 

              Dear lovely Death,
              Change is thy other name.

Finally, it is important to remember that, albeit death awaits all 
of us along the path of life, it is, nonetheless,  part and parcel 
of life.  For without it, there would be no life.  And as stated 
by one far more eloquent than I:

       Look to this day!  For it is life, the very life of life.
       In it's brief course lies all the verities and realities of 
       your existence:  The bliss of growth, the glory of action, 
       the splendor of beauty;  
       For yesterday is but a dream, and tomorrow is only a 
       vision; but today, well lived, makes every yesterday a 
       dream of happiness and every tomorrow a vision of hope.
       Look well, therefore, to this day!



THE COMMITMENT

In placing the ashes of Hamish MacTaggart in this hollowed ground, 
we think again of all that our dear son, brother, companion and 
friend meant and means to us.  We dedicate this simple plot, amid 
these natural surroundings, to every beautiful and precious memory 
associated with him.

We lay these ashes in that gentle earth which has been the chief 
support of humankind, since first they walked beneath the sun.  To 
all human beings, to all living forms, the soil has ever provided 
the sustenance that is the staff of life.  To that good earth we 
now commit the ashes of our friend and say with the poet Shelley:

       He made one with Nature:  there is heard.
       His voice in all her music, from the moan.
       Of thunder, to the song of night's sweet bird;
       He is a presence to be felt and known.
       In darkness and in light, from herb and stone....

       He is a portion of the loveliness
       Which once he made more lovely.


BENEDICTION

Now the work is left to us, the living, to carry forth the beauty 
and joy of that life which has been taken from us.  Where we weep, 
Hamish would have us laugh.  Where we mourn, Hamish would have us 
rejoice.  But we know that he will forgive us our grief, for to 
grieve is to love, to love is to cherish, and to cherish is to 
give praise and thanksgiving for the life which has blessed us 
all.

To that life we pray courage and strength, that our frailty be 
forgiven, our sorrows redeemed, the wounds of our loss healed, in 
the sure knowledge that life moves forward and does not tarry with 
yesterday, and that the life before us beckons to greater glory as 
the only memorial that is fitting and just.

Let us depart in peace and look to the morning, assured that 
tomorrow the sun will rise again.  Life gives and life takes away:  
Blessed be life, above all, forever.

May the truth that makes us free, the hope that never dies and the 
love that casts out fear lead us forward together until the 
dayspring breaks, and the shadows flee away.  Amen.